Hope (Book 2, Harvester of Light Trilogy; Young Adult Science Fiction) (6 page)

“So killing
thousands of people is what you call exciting?” My father’s voice brimmed with
anger.

“Of course not,”
Margaret replied, little atonement in her voice, just tiredness.  “Lives on
both side of this battle were lost but hopefully not in vain.”

“Then why
sacrifice your own people?  What did you hope to gain from their suicide
mission?”

“Salvation,”
Margaret said.  “I knew if we tripped your self-destruct you wouldn’t have any
other choice but to come out.”

“How did you know
this is where the tunnels led?” I asked.

A sad smile
stretched Margaret’s thin lips.  “My father helped build the facility down
there.  When I was a little girl he showed me everything about it, even the
emergency fail safes.”

“Why weren’t you
living down there if your father helped build it?” I asked.

“My parents were
among the first to be taken by the harvesters.  I only escaped because they
sacrificed themselves to give me a chance at a life.”  Margaret let out a harsh
laugh.  “I’m not sure if they would have gone to the trouble if they had known
the way my life would turn out.”

“But why force us
to the surface? Why sacrifice your own people?”  My father asked.

Margaret was
silent.  I wasn’t sure she was going to answer.

“You wouldn’t have
come up any other way.  Those who sacrificed their lives were the weakest of us
and most likely to die anyway.  They gave us the gift of their lives so that we
might have a chance to live.  There wasn’t any other way to find the other
underground haven.”

“What makes you
think there is one?”  A man I had only met once asked, as he stepped up to join
the conversation.  He was in his sixties with wild grey hair and a mustache. 
His eyes looked almost black against his pale skin in the dim torch light.

“My father told me
there was one and my father never lied to me.  If you don’t take us there,
we’ll kill all of you where you stand,” Margaret said without hesitation. 
“But, we are offering you a chance to begin again if you allow us to join you.”

“The stunt your
people pulled killed almost half our population,” the man accused angrily. 
“Why would we want murders living among us?”

“I would be
careful who you call a murderer.  Your people have been trading us off to the
harvesters for years.  There’s hardly anyone left here on this side of the
barrier because of you!”

“If you had just
come to us, we might have been able to work something out,” my father said.

Margaret shook her
head.  “No thanks.  I didn’t feel like being made into harvester spare parts.”

“We don’t deal
with harvesters,” the man said, but even I could hear the lie clear enough.

“Either you take
us to the alternate location or you die,” Margaret said like either option was
fine with her.  “I think the choice is clear enough.”

Margaret turned
her back to us and joined her people near the transporters.

I looked over at
the man who had come to my hospital room and introduced himself to me.

“Mr. President,” I
heard a woman call.

The man turned
toward the woman’s voice and walked away from us.

I stared at his
back as the man who used to be President of the United States walked away.

Chapter 6

Tears of despair
surrounded me.  Those who were able to escape the destruction of the Southern
Kingdom seemed inconsolable in their loss of paradise.  Many of them had never been
forced to face the reality of the real world because they were able to make a
home in the Southern Kingdom before eternal grey consumed the outside.  Being cruelly
thrust out of their cushy lives to live in what was left above ground seemed to
be more than some of them were capable of handling.  I felt lucky in a strange
way.  At least I knew what it took to survive on the surface.  It was the only
home I knew.  It was where I was most comfortable.

The only
difference between my past and present was the fact I was fortunate enough to
have more than one friend with me this time.  Kirk and Teegan made it out on
the last transport to emerge from the lake.  I had to admit the circumstances
we found ourselves in weren’t ideal but at least we were all alive and
together, for however long.

“Man, I just don’t
think I can stand to see my Mom cry anymore,” Kale said, coming to sit in the
circle we had made around one of the campfires the outsiders let us build to
keep warm by.

Teegan put a
comforting arm around Kale’s shoulders bringing a small smile to his face.

“So does anyone
know what’s going on?”  Kirk asked.  “It’s almost morning.  Why haven’t we left
for this other underground Shangri-La the outsiders want us to take them to?”

“Because, sweet
boy,” Doc Riley said, leaning towards the fire to warm her hands, “the council
hasn’t made up its mind.”

“Made up its mind
about what?  Taking them with us?” Ash questioned.  “It doesn’t seem like they
have much of a choice.”

I looked over at
the circle of huddled leaders standing less than twenty yards away from us. 
The group of five, including my father, had been talking with one another for
hours, which made me question who my father had been talking to in his secret
room.  Did he have a direct line to the President in there?  Was that who he
was arguing with when I discovered his secret lair?  It made sense since my
father hadn’t stopped arguing with the President since they started their
little pow-wow over our future with the outsiders. 

A loud bang came
from one of the transporters.  When I looked up, I saw Margaret emerge from the
one we used to escape in holding the small black briefcase my father brought
with him.  Her face contorted by rage, Margaret headed straight for the
gathered members of the council.  I looked over at my father and saw him warily
watch Margaret’s progress towards them.  His shoulders seemed to pull back
involuntarily as he stood straighter.

Margaret breeched
the torch barrier holding the briefcase up.

“Whose is this?”
She demanded.  The anger in her voice was on the verge of being manic. “Whose
is this?”  She screamed.

“It’s mine,” my
father said.

Margaret threw the
case at my father making him catch it quickly.

“Open it,” she
ordered, pulling out a pistol from a pocket of her coat and aiming it straight
at my father’s head.

I made a move to
stand up intent on going to my father, but Ash grabbed the back of my coat
forcing me to stay seated on the ground.

“Let me go,” I
said.

“Your father can
handle things,” Ash whispered.  “If you go over there, you might make things
worse.  She’s not right in the head, Skye.  Let your Dad deal with her.”

I looked back at
my father.  He was kneeling with the briefcase lying on the ground in front of
him.  He unsnapped the clips at the front of the case and slowly opened it.

“Take it out,”
Margaret demanded, her gun hand shaking but still pointed directly at my
father.

My dad reached
inside the briefcase and pulled out a small shiny black laptop computer.  I
felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw what was engraved in silver on top
of it.  It was the infinity symbol, Lucena’s crest.

“Are you the one
in charge of making deals with that bitch?”

My father stood with
the laptop still in his hands.

“Tell me!” 
Margaret’s men came to stand behind her with their guns drawn on my father like
they were daring him to not answer.

“Yes,” my father
said, his gaze reluctantly looking in my direction.  “I’m responsible.”

Even though I
heard the words come out of his mouth, my mind refused to believe what he was
admitting to.  He had to be covering up for someone else’s sins.  The man I
knew and loved could never knowingly hand over innocent lives to be butchered
by the harvesters.  Or had the war truly changed him that much?  With the loss
of his family, had my father lost his humanity too?

Before I knew what
was happening, Margaret shot my father point blank in the chest.  He fell
backwards onto the ground dropping the laptop, causing it to shatter like
glass.

Everything after
that felt like it was in slow motion.  I felt more than heard myself scream for
him.  I leapt to my feet before Ash could stop me and ran to my father not
caring that the men standing behind Margaret might shoot me for trying to help him.

Tears of hot
anguish trailed down my face as I knelt down beside him tearing at his coat to find
the damage Margaret’s bullet had inflicted.  A circular stain of blood was
rapidly spreading through the blue pullover he was wearing.  I put my hand over
the wound calling on every bit of power I had inside me to heal him before he
died.  The people around me became a blur of motion and frantic voices.  My
mind blocked them out somehow allowing me to concentrate on healing my father. 
The mingled scent of gun powder with my father’s blood hung in the air around
me like a fog enveloping my senses.  I felt someone give a sharp tug on my
jacket only to hear a guttural grunt as that person was tackled to the ground
behind me.  Gunshots were fired but I didn’t have time to ponder who else might
be injured.  All my thoughts were centered on my father’s wound.

The rise and fall
of his chest beneath my hands helped me focus on what needed to be done.  I
felt my own blood rush through my body and hoped my healing power was working. 
I still didn’t understand how my power worked but it was always there when I
needed it.  I prayed it wouldn’t abandon me now, not after just being reunited
with my dad again.  I didn’t care what he had to do to survive, even if that
meant trading the outsiders to Lucena.  I could forgive him his faults.  I just
needed him to live.

“Skye…”

Ash’s voice
sounded like it was a mile away even though I felt his presence right next to
me.

“Skye.  You healed
him.  You can stop.”

I forced myself to
open my eyes.  My father’s blood covered my hands like a pair of red gloves.  I
looked up at his face and saw him looking at me with a mixture of pride and
fear.

“How the hell did
she do that?”  Margaret asked.  She stood on the other side of my father
staring at me with wide eyes.

I didn’t know what
to say but telling the truth seemed the best option.

“I can heal
people,” I told her.

“What are you?” 
Margaret lifted her gun until it was level with my head.  Her men did the same.

“I’m human, but I
have nanites inside me that allow me to heal.”

“Then you’re a
harvester.”  Margaret pulled back the hammer on her pistol preparing to shoot.

“No.  I’m human.”
I repeated, unable to think of anything better to say.

My father sat up.

“She’s Lucena
Day’s daughter,” he told her.  A collective gasp came from both outsiders and
people from the Southern Kingdom.  “And if I were you, I would put that gun
down before you do something stupid like shoot her head off.”

“If she’s the Queen’s
daughter, she deserves to die.”

“Are you a
complete idiot?” My father asked.  “What do you think the Queen will do to you
if she learns you killed her one and only child?”

“She won’t do
anything to me,” Margaret said defiantly.  “She can’t cross the barrier.”

My father let out
a harsh, pitying laugh.  “There is no barrier you fool.”

Everyone went
silent.

“Yes there is,”
Margaret said.  “I see it every night.”

“What you see is
an illusion.”

“Jon…don’t…” the President
started to walk closer to us but was stopped by Margaret’s men.

“Explain,”
Margaret said to my father.

“The barrier was
never sustainable.  It took too much energy to charge a field that long and
wide.  Why do you think we were trading with the Queen?  We were buying time to
figure out a way to bring the radiation field back up.  Lucena could have come
through at anytime but she made a bargain with us instead.  As long as we
rounded up the people she needed on this side of the barrier and brought them
to her, we could continue living peacefully down below.  The people we traded
would have ended up in her hands one way or another.”

Margaret lowered
her pistol but her men kept theirs trained on us.

“You’re lying,”
she said.

“What do I have to
gain by lying to you?”

“Put your guns
down,” Margaret said to her men.

Her gaze was
caught by the shattered laptop still on the ground at my father’s feet.

“Did you use that
thing to communicate with her?”

“Yes.  She would
contact me when she needed a new shipment.”

“What will happen
if she tries to contact you and she can’t reach you?”

“She’ll send her
people through the barrier to find out what’s wrong.  The only place we will be
safe is in the secondary facility.”

“Why will we be
safe there?”

“There’s an
identical laptop there.  If we can get to it before she tries to contact me
again, then we don’t have anything to worry about.”

“But she’ll expect
you to still trade with her.”

“Yes,” my father
said, looking up at Margaret.  “Can you live with that?”

Margaret let out a
deep sigh.  The weight of so many lives was now on her shoulders too.  She
looked around at her people, half starved, standing around in threadbare
clothes.  I knew what it took to live out here and knew that more than anything
they just wanted a warm place to lay their heads.  They needed to feel safe even
it was just temporary.

“All right,”
Margaret said, her voice sounding defeated.  “We better get going before she
figures out what’s happened.”

Margaret held her
hand down to my father to help him to his feet, but I knew the gesture meant
more than just helping somebody up.  It meant she had made her peace with her
decision and couldn’t hold a grudge against us anymore.  She was just as guilty
as the rest of us now.